Canva

Canva is a browser-based graphic design platform that lets non-designers create professional-looking graphics, presentations, social media posts, videos, and print materials. The Mac app is a native wrapper around the web experience, giving you a dedicated window with offline access to some features. Canva's pitch is straightforward: you don't need to learn Photoshop or Illustrator to create good-looking designs. The platform provides thousands of templates, drag-and-drop editing, a library of stock photos and graphics, and AI-powered tools for text generation, image editing, and background removal. You start with a template, swap out the text and images, adjust colors to match your brand, and export in whatever format you need. Founded in 2013 by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams, Canva has grown to over 220 million monthly active users. It's the most popular design tool for non-designers and is widely used by small businesses, marketing teams, social media managers, educators, and content creators who need regular design output without a dedicated designer on staff. The free plan is genuinely useful—you get access to templates, basic editing, export options, and 5GB of cloud storage. Canva Pro ($15/month or $120/year) adds premium templates, Brand Kit (consistent brand colors, fonts, and logos across designs), background removal, content scheduling, and 1TB of storage. Canva Teams ($10/user/month, 3-user minimum) adds team collaboration features. Enterprise plans add admin controls, SSO, and brand management. The Mac app doesn't add much over the browser experience. It provides a dedicated window, Dock presence, and some offline functionality, but Canva is fundamentally a web app. The Mac app is most useful if you want Canva accessible from your Dock without opening a browser tab. The Homebrew cask installs the native app, but you can also just use canva.com in your browser.